My friends,

I have early court tomorrow and a day of appointments thereafter.  I will not have a chance to post until late tomorrow, so I’m sharing with you all now.

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law, Joanna Mitchell MacLaughlin.  She powerfully impact me.  The time that I spent with her during her last illness provided me with an experience that propelled me forward on this journey.  The words spoken by the priest who conducted her service awakened in me the desire to live as she had lived:  Without complaint.

I have not succeeded.  Admittedly, unforeseen challenges have pushed me a bit back from the path, storms against which I struggled, wrapping my scarf around my thin neck, huddling into my coat, bending, pushing.  But, too, I have found unexpected support.  Many who have always cheered my efforts to improve continued to do so this year.  I also have met and made some  amazing new friends during this, my year without complaining.

After court today, I barreled down Troost, made it to Fiddly Figg before it closed, and to Mount Moriah before the clanging of the iron gates at dusk.  While I would normally have gotten her flowers from Roses Only or, on a regular Sunday, at the local HyVee, my obligations precluded either.  The ladies at Fiddly Figg created a lovely bouquet such as I truly think Joanna would have enjoyed.  When I told them where I intended to take it, they asked questions about the colors she preferred, and provided a cemetery vase with a metal spike for anchoring it to the ground.

I took the vase to Joanna’s resting place, and cleaned away the flowers which I had left on my last visit.  With what my mother would call ‘spit polish’, I wiped away as much of the accumulated dirt as I could, vowing to bring Windex and a rag next visit.  Joanna, from her spot on the banks of the river in Paradise, smiled on me.  I stood, talking with her, delivering the message of love from her beloved Jabez, and telling her that I missed her.

Standing, I gazed across the lake, with its cheerful fountain.  A pale, cloudless sky rose above me.  I phoned Jay, telling him that the flowers had been delivered and photographed.  I told him that I had tendered his message of love to Joanna.

While I miss my own mother, at the time of her death I had not yet gotten to a place from which I could undertaken any fundamental change in my outlook or my attitude.  All the demons which clutched my soul still blinded me, and would for many years.  That it took Joanna’s kindness and our loss of her to begin the melting of six decades of steely obstinance should not be read as a condemnation of my mother’s parenting.  “Mama tried; mama tried.”  I remember them both, though lamentably, I have never visited my mother’s grave, except for the two times when we laid others to rest beside her.

I post every day in memory of Joanna, and of Lucille, my mother; and of Johanna, my maternal grandmother.  These three women gave me so much, each in their own way.  My mother gave me life and a faith, which I have sometimes lost, in my own potential, as well as an abiding understanding that some things must just be endured.  My grandmother provided a quiet example of strength against immeasurable odds as well as demonstrating a delicious sauciness — she felt entitled to sit in the dark on the patio out back clad only in her slip and house shoes after a long, difficult day at the office.

In the four years that I knew her, Joanna reminded me that one could be both strong and tender, both self-assured and gentle.  Perhaps I could have learned those lessons from my own mother, and from her mother.  But I was not ready.  In the quiet of those days that Joanna and I spent together during her last illness, my heart opened, and she who had planted so many gardens, sowed the seeds of recovery in the wilderness of my heart.

I miss Joanna.  I miss being her daughter-in-law, and I miss hearing her greet me.  I miss everything about her, from her Talbot wardrobe to her Finn sandals and every smile bestowed on me from under her elegant eyebrows, on her lively face.  I am my mother’s daughter.  I look like her; I have her hair and I have her tenacity.  But I hope, some day, I can say that from Joanna, I acquired a certain sweetness that somehow I had never previously found in myself.  She gave that to me.  I am forever in her debt.